Encroachment of land, lakes has Governor worried

Governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj has expressed his concern over illegal grabbing of government land and lakes.

He was addressing a gathering at Raj Bhavan on Monday during the Kannada Development Journalism Award ceremony, which was organised by Charkha, a non-government organisation for promoting development journalism, to mark Kannada Journalism Day.

Journalists who received the awards are Sheela D’Souza, Ravi Kumar Bhadravathi, M J Rajiv Gowda Melur, Sanjay Gubbi, Uma Ananth, Bharathi Hedge and S S Mohan Kumar.
Bhardwaj said massive encroachment of government land and lakes worry him. “Due to illegal encroachment of government land citizens will suffer. Bangalore is turning into a commercial city. Why do you want to damage the beauty of this City,” he asked.

The governor said a massive building was coming up next to Raj Bhavan despite his objections. “I spoke to the authorities concerned, but nobody is bothered,” he lamented. Expressing his concern over the encroachment of the catchment areas of Cauvery river, he said this would affect ecology.

“You will get water if the KRS dam is full. It is good that no developmental activities have been allowed near the Cauvery river but frantic efforts are being made to disturb the catchment areas of the river. People with bags of money are mining in the granite quarries, felling trees and building resorts,” he said.

He said people in Karnataka, who were mainly dependent on dams, should ensure effective water management. Citing the flooding in Uttarakhand, which killed a large number of people, Bhardwaj said the calamity was a result of the damage to the Himalayan ecology caused by quarrying, tree-felling and construction activities. He called upon journalists to highlight such wrongdoings.

Earlier speaking on the occasion, former chief secretary of Karnataka, Chiranjeev Singh, said development journalism was a tool of social justice giving the ground report to policy makers.He said vernacular dailies had a major role to play in reaching out to the masses.
He said the role of media today was to fight poverty, social injustice, unemployment, food scarcity and shelter for homeless people. He termed the media’s obsession with politics unfortunate.